A practical test for whether a network is built for the distributed reality most businesses now operate in. Five pillars, ten questions — if any answer makes you wince, that is where to start.
Scalability
- Can you add the next site (or the next hundred) with zero-touch provisioning?
- Does the marginal cost and complexity of one more location approach zero?
Visibility
- Can you see the health, performance, and security posture of every link and every site from a single pane of glass?
- Or do you still need to “walk the network”?
Accountability
- When something degrades or fails, can you answer “what happened, where, and when” without a forensic investigation?
- Is the evidence available in real time?
Affordability
- Is the budget buying resilience across many edges, or feature depth at a core most sites no longer need?
- Are you reallocating spend, or simply increasing it?
Reliability
- When a link fails, does the user notice?
- Is “reboot the router” still part of the operating manual — or has the architecture made the failure invisible?